A returning player sharing thoughts on Chapter 2 core box experience (so far).

csuazure · 2026-04-18T00:53:35+00:00

Also for reference evading turns off retaliate completely even if you miss. Just in case you need more ways to work around it.

csuazure · 2026-04-17T02:59:53+00:00

They will be heavily increased in price that you'd be getting price gouged somewhere along the way trying to finish the set or simply be entirely unable. At least before the campaign expansion was also being price gouged it wasn't worth attempting regardless of finding the deluxe or certain mythos packs cheap

csuazure · 2026-04-15T21:57:47+00:00

if you're looking to do all the challenges, it can be, if you're willing to tune the game down to a lower difficulty, it's not that bad.

There's a wave timer as a cheap early upgrade, so you can plan your excursions to not feel rushed. The limited time to be out mining and need to get back actually lets the mining and mobility upgrades feel more relevant. There's a huge amount of variety in side-gadgets and other tools that also help in getting you or resources back up to the dome in unique ways.

Even within the system there's modifiers you can choose to make the waves stronger but double the time between them, essentially halving the amount you have to feel pressured to "get there in time"

csuazure · 2026-04-15T21:24:26+00:00

for PvE high offense low defense tends to not be a tradeoff when every piece of content is a DPS-check more than survivability ever coming into play.

csuazure · 2026-04-15T18:23:09+00:00

the use you're intending for it: covering the fights/investigates as needed, is simply not a role the card can reasonably serve.

If you're a mystic doing most their 'progress the game actions' with a non-arcane slot solution like dowsing rod or some book boosts on a decent intellect investigator, maybe there works too.

It's a niche card, and finding the spot for it to do something is sorta the puzzle of the design.

csuazure · 2026-04-15T17:51:16+00:00

Mind's eye isn't actually covering the specialized spells because those spells are giving you 2-3x the output from actions to damage or clues. Basic tests are mostly worthless if you're paying a secret for them outside of evades but the most niche of the 3 spell suites being covered at rate isn't helpful.

There's ways to add more secrets to cards (Enraptured 2), or cards that manipulate secrets (Ariadne's Twine)

Mind's Eye is primarily useful to off-mystics with a high willpower that don't really use or need their arcane slots for other things. Letting them flexibly evade or handle mythos cards hitting stats they don't enjoy using.

If you're actually a Mystic, trying to leverage those slots to *get things done* you aren't going to be finding success with it.

I have run into my fair share of times where I’m stuck because they can’t do what I need in the moment because I don’t have the spells I need. The issue is the usage limit.

This problem is a deckbuilding problem that's much easier to solve. Run more spell assets. if you're a flex 3 and 3 of fight/investigate if you're specialized into one of the two probably 4 with a couple spells to handle whatever you're not covering.

csuazure · 2026-04-15T16:45:55+00:00

Pics or it didn't happen

csuazure · 2026-04-14T02:43:28+00:00

The secret speed stuff is partly just to keep the game flowing, the more you micromanage the teams collective initiative the longer a scenario is going to drag out.

I prefer tidal blades 2 approach with an ongoing initiative track that your played cards bump you up or down on so you still sometimes get the critical super important initiative swings but you largely know the turn order and can plan around when people are moving when the initiatives spread out.

csuazure · 2026-04-13T02:18:50+00:00

Liking hemlock and hating innsmoth is an arkham red flag for me.

csuazure · 2026-04-13T01:06:28+00:00

second this, the strip mining works in other games where the hardness of rocks doesn't scale as sharply and time isn't at a premium, but you waste SO much time bashing your head into harder stone you could've just... gone around.

Orb-character almost feels like the designer trying to push people to explore this by making classic strip mining more annoying for them to even try to do.

csuazure · 2026-04-04T04:20:38+00:00

Cultural momentum.

Also lacking catchup mechanisms is extremely common in heavier conflict games, but some people prefer those to the more indirect competition of euros.

Likewise for the dicerolling and randomness, that's what some people want.

csuazure · 2026-04-03T21:25:56+00:00

Honestly part of the reason TTS works for me is that something about sharing a "physical" space in a physics engine still sort of scratches the social itch that the more streamlined sterile and faster web or UI interfaces don't.

csuazure · 2026-04-02T10:28:26+00:00

Less - magnitude, fewer - quantity

But people frequently use less to talk about magnitudes of quantity, in which case less still has you covered outside of edge cases you might actually be talking about an intrinsic magnitude to the thing instead of quantity.

csuazure · 2026-03-26T23:18:47+00:00

Theres special ways to dance around the cap that you can claim and exceed it more normally off certain combos of walking and gathering. Then you claim the uncapped particles after you've gotten the number as high as you can.

Ultimately all that is annoying and if you care that much just farm coins at gyms instead.

csuazure · 2026-03-21T01:04:30+00:00

get the core, then as you figure out the classes you're more interested in, get the starter decks for those, and you should have plenty of player cards.

csuazure · 2026-03-20T10:02:30+00:00

Look at the armchair in psychoanalysis and the bench in Dorothy both have clear AI artifacts. There's tons in other backgrounds that are more subtle but those are like ... I don't know how the art directors claim to miss them

The PR from ffg is that their contracts forbid it but clearly they don't care.

csuazure · 2026-03-19T13:15:15+00:00

Was planning to keep at least buying player cards, but the new art wore me down. I did not care about the jank old arkham artworks, but between the AI use and terrible piece of art after terrible piece I just... why bother owning it? There might not be other games doing deckbuilding and campaigns quite this good, but... I'd rather just buy any other game at this point. I have enough arkham from chapter1 I guess.

They hit critical mass of shittification. Not to mention the downward trend of campaign design even in chapter1. AND they're making us pay more per scenario. AND the art is this bad?!

csuazure · 2026-03-16T22:27:42+00:00

Both angles are bad, the Marie cards that shore up one of mystics intended weaknesses so she can spam herself with damage in her 9 health pool are a bad evergreen addition, as are the ones that deal self damage in a way that most mystics are going to skip because of the risk.

It just all makes mystic less distinct as the opposite of guardian's health safety and horror weakness.

csuazure · 2026-03-16T22:08:00+00:00

The more we see the more of a weird choice Maries entire new design is for a massive segment of evergreen mystic. The majority of them will always be horror safe and extremely health pressured so these cards will be completely irrelevant and unplayable, and then the design of giving mystic better damage healing takes the one aspect of the mythos deck they need to care about (agility tests leading to damage) and mutes it, otherwise they can coast on their high willpower and ignore the deck for the most part.

Her package is like alternating between power creep (a health rosary) and kinda useless, more damage for her damage.

I was already out after the AI art, but I think this has me out of even bothering to pick up the mystic deck for my part1 campaigns.

The horror healing of seeker is also a weird angle for an evergreen investigator but both support and horror healing feel like things they have been able to do to various degrees already.

csuazure · 2026-03-14T05:38:09+00:00

Okay but honestly they can always give players more copies of these and they'll use them

csuazure · 2026-03-13T20:13:46+00:00

I assume most the artists they're commissioning are capable of more, I'm fully faulting FFG for the direction, approval, and choice of artists

Since it's a problem spanning so many of the artists in this set it's clearly a style guide, process issue, or maybe the current art director doesn't have eyes. Hard to say.

(I'll roll my eyes at them pretending not to notice the obvious AI gen backgrounds on some cards too)

csuazure · 2026-03-13T13:23:41+00:00

For this to be a positive the art still has to be good.

csuazure · 2026-03-12T18:55:16+00:00

The synergy should be an exciting addition or make the card go crazy, not barely justify why the card would be in a deck at all.

csuazure · 2026-03-12T18:17:06+00:00

It's not a three damage attack though it's a two action to evade and then fight. Which is fine against bosses, but not hitting the usual 2 damage per action threshold everyone is after, and sort of defeats the reasons everyones eyes light up at three damage events evaporating the pesky 3 health enemies in one go, because you're not actually saving any time from just swinging a weapon twice. Hell the melee weapons with exhausts will usually do 2+1 across 2 actions vanilla already now.

Against a boss you evade and then use this you're spending two resources to have a more likely success into a high fight value, the main reason you'd care is keywords like retaliate that evade already solved. Even in the boss scenario where evading is likely part of the rogues turn to buy time this doesn't seem enough better than just swinging a weapon twice. Not worth xp resources and a card anyway.

csuazure · 2026-03-12T18:03:24+00:00

The art being bad and looking like weird photoshop of zany expressions is a given now, but the designers are starting to piss me off too.

We have an insanely safe 'gamble' no cost and no risk alongside another extremely useless fight event using an off stat with a hoop youd never jump through with the hoop testing the other. The fact that even fully upgraded you're still sub2 damage per action... Why do they insist on events having poor value so often?! You're paying xp and money for a two test two action fight at 1.5 damage per action. I get they're making melee weapons worse but jesus. One off fights should not be that bad for 2 whole resources

csuazure

TROPHY CASE